Bluefield is participating in an Experiences Canada Youth Exchange with E’cole George McDougall High School in Airdrie (Calgary) Alberta. Participants will between the ages of 14 – 17 years of age with at least one French Immersion Course.

The exchange is a reciprocal homestay exchange where each participant is twinned with a participant from Alberta. You will be staying at your twin’s home when we are in Calgary and they will being staying in your home when they are here. For the most part we are together as a group “learning by doing” as we will not be going to school while we are there and the PEI students will not be attending classes when our guests are here.

Click on the icon 2019 Experiences Canada Icon and be sure to be logged into your school cloud account to fill out an application form.

This is an exchange between 21 Bluefield High School students and 21 E’cole George McDougall High School a suburb of Calgary, Alberta.

The dates for the exchange are:

9 - 16 November 2019 PEI students in Alberta

16 - 23 May 2020 Alberta students in PEI

You will miss 3 days of school first semester and 4 days of school second semester.

This exchange is sanctioned by Experiences Canada and is federally funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage.

The cost of the exchange is $700 and includes return airfare, all activities within the itinerary, hotel accommodations, and most all meals. Payments can be made in installments with the last payment due in April 2020.

There are strict safety guidelines that must be followed in order to participate in this exchange including mandatory vulnerable sector RCMP checks for each hosting family member aged 18 or above.

Participants will be provided with medical insurance via Experiences Canada.

Parents/Guardians must be in a position to offer supervision to the visiting participant during free time as dictated by the itinerary.

Parents must be in a position to offer appropriate transportation.

Parents of participants must be aware that once a student agrees to participate in the exchange and their name has been forwarded to the Experiences Canada travel office, then they are responsible for the price of the ticket if they back out of the exchange.

Parents will be expected to attend a mandatory meeting prior to the acceptance of their child into the exchange.

A mandatory screening process to assess the suitability of participants/hosts will be in place.

We will not be attending classes while in Alberta but students will be responsible to do the work they miss while absent. Students will learn by experiencing: i.e. museums, local activities, etc.

When they Alberta students are in PEI, our students will not be attending school or working at a part time job as they are expected to experience PEI along with their twin.

This is a cultural linguistic exchange, and our goal will be to experience as much as possible.

Participants will be required to fill out an evaluation/questionnaire upon the completion of the exchange.

Students who cannot host a twin can still participate in the exchange (usually someone else can host 2)

This exchange represents Bluefield’s 14th exchange.

By filling out the application on Google Docs you are only showing interest in the exchange. You are not locking yourself into going, you are just showing interest in pursuing the possibility of participating in the exchange. When collected, all applicants will be looked over for suitability and a list of successful participants will be posted along with a waiting list.

To find out more visit Experiences Canada’s website https://experiencescanada.ca or just ask a fellow Bluefield student who has been on one.